


Happy

by LadyKeane



Category: LazyTown
Genre: Elves are basically all pansexual, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Sporty is sweet and clueless, Unrequited Love, discussions of sexual orientation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10097777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKeane/pseuds/LadyKeane
Summary: An accident reveals something about Robbie to Sportacus that he has a difficult time explaining.





	

Sportacus knew that look. That was the ‘Robbie-is-very-quickly-losing-patience-with-me’ look.  
The sports hero was currently kneeling in the middle of the road, surrounded by a messy pile of paper bags and boxes. The items once contained in them were spilled haphazardly across the ground. His muted apologies to the taller man were drowned out by the livid declaration that he was the klutziest blue kangaroo in the world. As he tried to gather all the objects back into their receptacles, those angry grey-green eyes just seemed to bore into poor Sportacus more keenly.

  
Robbie had been away for the weekend, travelling into the city for what he claimed to be ‘important villain’s business’. Judging from the massive haul of shopping he had brought back with him, Sportacus guessed that villains’ business was mostly retail therapy. Funnily enough, the elf had missed him – Lazytown always seemed less colourful without his eccentricities and bizarre inventions around. In a twisted sort of way Robbie was his favourite playmate, or at least his most interesting one. That afternoon, when Sportacus had spied the man heading back to town along the lonely road from the nearby train station, struggling with his plunder, his stomach had given a little flip of delight. Shimmying down the airship ladder and dashing up to meet him, he decided that it was a hero’s duty to help carry the considerable load. Regrettably, said load was piled so high that it had obscured Robbie’s vision, and hero and villain had crashed magnificently into one another.

  
“You’re paying for anything you broke, Sportacreep.”  
“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…”  
He held a thin stack of magazines in his hands, searching for the bag they had fallen out of. Their bright glossy colour had caught Sportacus’ eye, and when he took a better look at them, he inadvertently paused.   
The cover he was looking at was graced by the form of a handsome, athletic-looking man, wearing very few clothes and a come-hither smile. A chance waft of breeze blew the magazine open, and the various photographs revealed within made Sportacus turn a vivid shade of red.  
“What are you gawking at, you—”  
Robbie looked from Sportacus’ face to the magazines he was clutching, back to Sportacus’ face again. As the villain’s internal organs turned into lead, he gathered enough resolve to curtly snatch the offending publications away from the elf.  
“I-BOUGHT-THOSE-FOR-A-FRIEND,” Robbie managed to squeak as he shoved them unceremoniously into the first bag he could find.  
Sportacus frowned. “But you don’t have any friends, Robbie.”  
Okay, that stung for a number of reasons.

  
A bitter look of resignation passed over Robbie’s face as he broke their rigid eye contact. Sportacus also thought he looked a little bit sad.  
“Yeah, alright, elf. You win, you found out I’m gay, whoop-de-doo,” he growled softly. “What are you gonna do? Tell everyone in town so they’ll hate me even more?”  
A new level of confusion overwhelmed Sportacus. He tried to process what Robbie had said.  
“Gay? But… you don’t look that happy to me.”  
Oh, you HAVE to be kidding me, Robbie thought.  
“Not ‘happy’, idiot,” he snapped, returning to picking up his shopping. “Gay.” He angrily tossed the case of his new Swiss army knife into its bag. “Homosexual.” He stuffed a slightly dirty silk shirt into another bag. “Madonna fan.” A stack of DVDs clattered into yet another bag.  
A confused-puppy-dog look had taken hold of the elf’s features. “What are you talking about, Robbie?”  
Robbie paused, panic once again beginning to seep into him. Had he just accidentally shot himself in the foot? The last thing he needed was another reason for the town to ostracise him, and the great flipping oaf in front of him did not give the impression of being a reliable confidant.   
He inwardly scolded himself for buying thosed damned magazines in the first place. They were not the sort of publications that were ever available at the Lazytown newsagent, and Robbie had felt somewhat awkward purchasing them. But, he rationalised later, he couldn’t sublimate ALL of his desires with cake. And it wasn’t like he was ever going to be favoured with the touch of the blue elf—  
Er, the touch of another person.   
Like he’d ever want to touch the blue elf, God only knows where he’d been.

  
Sportacus’ imploringly curious gaze refused to go away. A (distant) voice in Robbie’s head screamed out a warning not to indulge him, but the blood rushing to his head seemed to drive his candour onwards.  
“Gay, you nitwit jumping bean, is when boys fall in love with other boys and girls fall in love with other girls.”  
Sportacus nodded slowly. “Oh, like in your magazines.” (Robbie scowled.)  
“But,” the hero added, “that seems a little bit strange.”  
Oh, no. Robbie was about to get chewed out by a homophobe elf jock. Elf culture didn’t have its own chapter of Southern Baptists, did it? Oh well, at least taking Sportakook’s reprimand would be good practice for when the rest of Lazytown would inevitably lynch him.  
“With us elves, it doesn’t really make any difference if your mate is a boy or a girl.”

  
Hang on. What?  
Robbie raised an eyebrow at Sportacus. “Then how are baby elves made?”  
Sportacus let out a mirthful laugh. “Sex, of course! Goodness, Robbie, I thought all humans at your age knew about the birds and bees. Didn’t your parents ever tell you—”  
“I know what sex is!” Not for the first time that afternoon, Robbie was thankful that the road to the train station was so isolated.  
“But this ‘gay’ thing,” Sportacus continued, “do humans actually think that two boys in love are different to a boy and a girl in love?”  
After a dramatic, long-suffering sigh, Robbie adopted a tone of voice that he usually reserved for young children and slow-witted sales clerks. “Yes. Unlike the other boys, I never got used to girl germs. So I date boys. Understand?”  
The hero frowned. “Why would someone want to narrow their options like that? You may as well say that you only like people with black hair.”  
The way elves thought was utterly baffling. As Robbie tried to conjure an explanation, a rather startling thought crossed his mind.  
“And have YOU ever fallen for another boy, Sportaclown?”  
The villain felt his core temperature skyrocket and his face sear with heat as Sportacus nodded calmly. Robbie had always bitterly pictured the hero’s type as being some ditzy, corn-fed cheerleader with mammaries large enough to completely obstruct bloodflow to the brain. THIS was certainly an unexpected discovery.   
“There was a guy at the sports academy I trained at. He was nice, but…” a tinge of regret entered his usually cheerful voice, “he sort of freaked out when he saw my pointed ears.”  
Robbie’s astonishment at the imparting of such personal information gave way to indignance. “He rejected you because of your EARS? Why would anyone in their right mind ever reject YOU? You’re—”  
The man’s tirade mercifully petered out before he could blurt out a single flattering adjective. Thank God the elf was so desperately naïve.   
“Anyway,” Robbie grunted, taking charge of the conversation, “you’d better not go blabbing to anyone about this or I’ll toss you into a vat of molten chocolate.”  
“Why?” Sportacus asked gently. Obviously his companion’s explanation of this whole ‘gay’ idea had not been sufficient.  
“Because, well…” the taller man slouched, staring at a nearby hatbox on the ground, “like I said, the people in town would hate me even more if they knew. And they’d hate YOU too if they knew about your little schoolboy tryst. So keep your yap shut.”  
The concept of being hated didn’t sit well with the hero. “That doesn’t sound very fair,” he murmured.  
“Whoever said life was fair?” Robbie growled. “Now flip off, Sportaflop, I don’t need any more of your so-called ‘help’ with my stuff.”  
With a sad, resigning smile, Sportacus stood up and bade him farewell.  
  
**  
  
Back in town, a sight awaited Sportacus that lifted his spirits. In a sunny corner of the sports park, the children stood in a ring gleefully tossing a bright pink football between them.  
“Sportacus, what’s the matter?” Stephanie asked, concerned at his gloomy demeanour. “You’re not as happy as usual.”  
“Well, Robbie has returned home—”  
“THAT explains it,” Stingy asided.  
“And when I met up with him near the train station, we had this weird conversation, and he seemed really upset about being gay…”  
Sportacus watched curiously as Pixel huffed heatedly, withdrew a twenty-dollar note from his pocket and handed it to a triumphant-looking Stephanie.  
It suddenly dawned on Sportacus what he had just let slip.  
“Oh, no!”  
“What’s the matter now?” Stephanie asked.  
“I was supposed to keep it a secret!”  
“It’s okay, Sportacus, we promise we won’t tell,” Pixel reassured him.  
Ziggy looked up from the lollipop he had been concentrating on. “Who’s telling what now?”  
The elf felt himself relax a little. The children invited him to resume the game with them.

  
It wasn’t long before Trixie and Stingy broke the momentum by fighting over the ball. Sportacus’ mind started to wander.  
“Hey, Stephanie?”  
“Yeah?”  
“You don’t think that people in Lazytown would hate Robbie for being gay, do you?”  
Stephanie’s expression look almost injured. “Oh, Sportacus, of COURSE not! People in this town are not like that at all! I mean, I can think of OTHER reasons people might dislike Robbie, but… thankfully, Lazytown is a really open-minded, understanding place with plenty of different kinds of people.”  
Sportacus smiled, relief beginning to wash over him. He could always count on Stephanie.  
The little girl noticed as her friend’s smile became wider. An all-too-recognisable twinkle began to flash in his eyes.  
“Sportacus…” she said with a reproving motherly tone, “just what are you planning?”   
“Um…”  
He shied away from telling her by jumping between Stingy and Trixie to diffuse their conflict. Inside, however, he was simply bursting with excitement. If what Stephanie said was right, and the people of Lazytown really were open-minded, then Sportacus had just concocted a most wonderful idea— one that would make Robbie finally feel happy about being gay!  
  
**  
  
“Hey, Robbie! Guess what!”  
Sportacus cringed a little under the man’s reproachful glare, but he resolved to push onward. He was standing by the hatch door of the underground lair, having obviously just disturbed some manner of work in progress. Robbie clutched a monkey wrench in one grease-stained hand as he stared down at his rival.  
“This had better be good,” he replied flatly.  
“Oh, it is. See, I thought about that talk we had yesterday, and it made me sad to think people might hate you just for being gay.” This sentence came out of the elf’s mouth somewhat clumsily— he still really didn’t understand this new term and found himself wondering what it really had to do with being happy. Especially considering how cranky Robbie looked.  
“But, well, I since discovered that no-one in this town really has a problem with it! Not at all! Although most of the teenage boys seemed to giggle a lot at the word…”  
“What are you dribbling about, Sportadork? To know for sure whether they’d hate me more you’d have to tell—”  
Robbie’s pupils dilated as a sheepish look crawled onto Sportacus’ face.  
“Everyone in town,” he finished, voice dangerously calm.

  
And he had. Most were benignly apathetic, idly wondering why their local superhero was so fascinated by Robbie Rotten’s sexual orientation. Sportacus also noticed a few repeat performances of Pixel and Stephanie’s exchange of money. All in all, people took the information with tranquil acceptance. Stingy’s parents had seemed a little tense about it, but made an effort to be understanding. And there WAS one lady…  
“…But I promise, Robbie, the old lady with the hammond organ and the cross around her neck was the only one who thought it was a bad thing! She started talking about pillars of salt… but you never liked her anyway! Please don’t be mad…”  
The sports hero made a hasty escape as a furious barrage of curse words and a poorly-aimed monkey wrench were flung in his direction.


End file.
